The seventh instalment of Extrapolations finds Sylvie (Marion Cotillard) and August ‘Oggie’ Bolo (Forest Whitaker) hosting a New Year dinner party for some young friends, at which Oggie announces that he is planning to have his consciousness digitised until the environment can be fixed.

What follows is essentially a one-set stage play; a long dark night of the soul where getting digitised stands in for divorce, and there’s much talk of thwarted ambition, infidelity and infertility. It’s a bold move by Scott Burns to mix things up and have such a simple episode in contrast to all the globe-trotting and tech of the rest of the series. Unfortunately, writer Bess Wohl, only seems passingly interested in the science hypothetical, so what we’re left with is a watered-down take on Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? which doesn’t really do anything fresh with the well-trodden idea of consciousness upload. The star-studded cast do their best, but while the script is perfectly competent, the constant reminders of playwright Edward Albee’s award-winning theatre classic only serve to remind you that he did it better.

There’s a twist of sorts, but once the ‘balloon game’ kicks in, the astute viewer can see the outcome coming a mile off.

Verdict: 2068: The Going Away Party is a bit of a damp squib albeit a worthy one. To be fair, if you haven’t seen Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? it might feel a good deal fresher, but it wasn’t something I could get past. 5/10

Martin Jameson

www.ninjamarmoset.com